


Garden of the World

by SylvanWitch



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, M/M, OIF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-06 19:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Did you know this was once the garden of the world?” Nate hears himself asking, his voice tinny and distant, as if through a broken comms line.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“Really, sir?” Brad asks in that careful voice of his, the one he uses when he doesn’t want anyone to know what he really thinks.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Garden of the World

There is dust in the air, and it stinks of decay:  rotting garbage, human waste, death and despair.

 

Nate thinks they’ve delivered enough of that already, don’t need to be on foot, going door to door, waiting for someone to take a shot at them in the name of his God or his ruler or his village or his family.

 

The house is stifling, dark, and smells of sweaty bedding and food congealing on plates.  The stucco peels from the walls, revealing mud bricks older than his country, and Nate wonders again what the fuck they’re doing here.

 

Not the house, not this unnamed village.  Not even Iraq.  Mesopotamia.  Nate can’t think of it as anything else.  In his head he sees the map of the ancient world overlaying this one, an MSR turned into a trade route, a river into an artery that pulsed life into the garden of the world.

 

He shakes his head to drag his mind back to the here and now.  He’s sloppy with exhaustion, almost stumbling with it, the oppressive heat, the fog of his own stink rising from his unwashed body, the glare of the sun as he steps out of the empty house and takes a moment to breathe and reorient.

 

Movement on his periphery brings his gun around before he’s even focused on the figure emerging from another low, windowless structure.  It’s Brad, dusty face crimped into a pained expression, the closest the Iceman might come to admitting that this kind of thing can hurt:  picking apart strangers’ lives, laying claim to their privacy, their sense of security, shaking them like an empty can and then putting them back.

 

The villagers’ lives might look the same after Nate and his men are gone, but they aren’t actually identical.  There’s a weakness where the sameness of ordinary days was broken by invasion and then pasted back together with bottled water and goodbye promises of freedom.

 

Nate sighs, hating the inside of his head, and nods at Brad, who says in a firm, carrying voice, “Clear.”

 

All down the narrow lane between houses, members of his platoon emerge and nod, call out, “Clear,” to their teammates, and look to Nate, waiting patiently for orders.

 

Espera disturbs the peace by staggering out of the building on the end, a string of curses unspooling from his lips and his gun gripped in white-knuckled hands.  He’s not aiming at anything back the way he came, which is good, since Garza is right behind him, looking green beneath his natural color.  It means there’s no imminent threat in the building they’ve just exited.

 

Nate’s already jogging toward the end of the line, past the watchful, dirty faces of his men.  When he nears the building, he can smell something worse, fouler than the general stink of the village, and he suspects what the building holds.

 

“Sergeant?” he asks Espera, nodding at Garza, too, to include him, to show that he’s concerned about both of them, not just their sitrep.

 

“Found the men of the village,” Espera says shortly, eyes dark, sardonic mouth twisted into a more than ordinary grimace.  He’s holding back a spate of condemning words, maybe about the white man, maybe about the Marines. 

 

Maybe about the human race in general or Nate in particular.

 

Nate forestalls it with a raised hand.

 

“Brad, get Mish over here,” he orders, eyes on the remains of the villagers, who’d been herded into a weeping, cringing collection of tattered black cloth, dirty white skirting, faded but still colorful headscarves.  They’re crouched next to a goat pen at the south end of the village.  That many goats should lace the air with a gamy, feral stench, but all Nate can smell is death.

 

When Mish catches a whiff of the building as he approaches Nate, the obsequious, bullshit smile drops from his face and he advances on the surviving villagers with a grave look.  He speaks in the rapid rise-and-fall of the language, gesturing back toward the building that Nate and Espera have finally moved upwind from.

Garza has fallen back to stand with Bravo One.  Nate can’t blame him for not wanting to hear another rendition of the same story they’ve already gotten at two other villages along the route.

 

He doesn’t need to hear it from Mish.  He already knows that the mechanized division of the Republican Guard that they’re supposed to be fronting had rolled through a couple of days ago and attempted to conscript all able-bodied men and boys.

 

When some had refused, they’d been made examples of for the rest, who’d climbed onto the Zils and gone off, probably forever.

 

There’s a stony look in the eyes of the old women, a red-rimmed and angry look around the eyes of the mothers.  The children are strangely still, shocked into silence by fear and the kind of damage that leads to future wars.

 

Fuck, but he’s tired.

 

“These people dragged their dead into the house,” Mish explains.  

 

That makes sense.  The Republican Guard would have left them in the streets as a message to US forces.

 

Sighing, Nate waves away the rest of Mish’s narrative, orders Bravos One and Two to distribute water and humrats.  When Mish tugs on his sleeve, it gets Nate’s attention, though.  The man isn’t demonstrative with Americans, touching the Iraqis often, being touched in turn.  But he doesn’t put hands on the Marines.  

 

“What is it?” Nate manages, though his mouth feels like the air tastes and a curl of nausea is pushing against his throat.  He swallows bitterness and tries to pay attention.  It’s his fucking job to pay attention.

 

“There’s a boy over there,” Mish gestures vaguely at the huddled human detritus. “Says they took his brother and can we watch for him.”

 

Nate levels Mish with a cutting look, anger suddenly trumping sickness, heat rising up his neck and into his face.  

 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks the translator, voice surprisingly calm.  He feels like it should come out of him in a strangled howl.

 

He should be processing the fact that it isn’t like Mish to pass on these kinds of humanitarian requests.  To date, Mish’s  compassion has only functioned in direct proportion to what he gets out of an exchange.  Nate’s never witnessed altruism where their translator is concerned, and it doesn’t look like these people have anything to offer Mish.

 

That should be the first thing Nate notices.

  
The next is the boy Mish is pointing out, a skinny, pox-riddled kid, malnourished, with legs growing at the odd angles indicative of polio, which probably explains why he’s there at all, not dead with the others or off preparing to be killed, maybe by Nate himself.

 

The boy is sitting somewhat apart from the rest of the villagers, occupying his natural role as pariah.

 

The third thing Nate should take into account is the weight of Brad’s eyes on him.  Colbert has finished distributing rations and is standing by himself halfway between Nate and the villagers, whose subdued chatter over the food and water is broken by the bleating of hungry goats.

 

Nate notices none of this, however, his head taken over by a roaring, the rush of blood, his racing heartbeat, an attenuation of time such as he hasn’t felt since the early days of the invasion.

 

He’d thought he was past the frozen moments of incomprehension.

 

Without issuing an order or an explanation, Nate pivots on his heel and moves off toward the far side of the death house, putting its far wall to his back and staring out over a wasteland of road trash, an irrigation ditch dried to cracking, the carcass of a goat gathering flies.

 

It stinks here, too, but less so, a breeze carrying now and then a cleaner scent.  Nate breathes and tries to think, brushes a fly away from the stock of his gun, closes his eyes against dust blown into his face.  

 

Only a hand on his shoulder tells him he’s fallen asleep standing up, and he pushes away from the wall, startled, finger automatically seeking the trigger before it registers that Brad is saying, “Sir?  You okay?”

 

Nate’s only answer is a weak, awkward laugh, a choked sound more like a sob that heats his face with humiliation.  He should be stronger than this.

 

It’s a relief, though, when Brad’s grip on his shoulder tightens and is joined by a second on his other shoulder,  and then a firm, tiny push that makes him feel like he’s falling, regardless of the proximity of the wall he’s being propped against or the strength of Brad’s hands holding him up.

 

“Did you know this was once the garden of the world?” Nate hears himself asking, his voice tinny and distant, as if through a broken comms line.

 

“Really, sir?” Brad asks in that careful voice of his, the one he uses when he doesn’t want anyone to know what he really thinks.

 

“Yeah,” Nate answers, eyes tracking from the arid wasteland behind Brad to the sergeant’s face, closer than he’d thought, close enough to startle him.  Surprise translates to a shudder between Brad’s hands, and Brad’s grip tightens just a little in response.

  
Brad’s voice might be neutral, his Iceman eyes a cool blue, but Nate can see back in there, past the twin reflection of himself, something else—disquiet, unease, a feeling that if he doesn’t hold on to Nate, Nate might be gone.

 

Maybe it’s wishful thinking on Nate’s part, this longing.  The only communicating they’ve ever done that meant a damn was silent.  It could be that Nate misreads Brad’s worry now.  It doesn’t have to be personal.

 

After all, it’ll be on Brad to pick up the platoon if Nate comes apart and drifts away out here.

 

But that’s not it at all, Nate realizes, as Brad eases his grip a little and leans in, searching Nate’s face, some warmer feeling swimming up from the cool blue depths.

 

Brad smells like home is the first thing Nate thinks.  Under the sweat and caked dirt and engine exhaust and gun lube, Brad smells warm and alive and whole, feelings Nate associates with a place and time that might as well be fictional for all that he can summon a memory of it right now.

 

Brad’s lips are rough, wind-chapped and sunburned, his stubble prickly, his face damp with the perpetual sweat of the place.  They rest against Nate’s, biding, not asking anything in answer, and suddenly Nate wants to climb inside the feeling Brad’s giving him and rest there.

 

His response isn’t so much instinctive as it is inevitable, lips parting to let Brad’s tongue skate along his teeth and feel its way inside his mouth.

 

Brad tastes like old coffee, dip, and something else, bitter and acidic and sharp, and Nate thinks in a disconnected way that it’s the flavor of Brad’s gaze, incisive and distinct.

 

The kiss doesn’t last long, Brad moving away first, taking his hands from Nate’s shoulders, dropping his head to stare at the ground between his boots.  Nate might think that Brad has already returned to his old, indifferent self except for the way his chest rises and falls as he struggles to catch his breath and marshal some control.

 

For all that Nate himself is panting too, Brad’s touch has grounded him, put him back in his boots planted firmly on the dusty earth of this place that once was a garden.  He shoves away from the wall, stands upright, swaying but steady enough, and resumes command of himself.

 

“We good, Sergeant?”

 

That brings Brad’s face up, his gaze level and searching.  Nate lets him look, lets him see the tiny curve of a smile at the corners of his mouth and a heat in his eyes that Nate hopes hides the desperate sorrow still lurking behind his desire.

 

“Yessir,” Brad answers, a smile of his own teasing his mouth.

 

“Thank you, Brad,” Nate offers softly, already moving toward the corner of the building, already considering the orders to mount up and move on.

 

“Any time, sir.”  

 

It sounds like a promise.

 


End file.
